Nine Inch Nails began in Cleveland in 1988 while Reznor was working at a recording studio. He wrote, arranged, performed, and produced the majority of the material, bringing in other musicians for live performances. The band quickly gained popularity with the debut release, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), which went triple platinum and signaled a breakthrough into the U.S. mainstream for industrial music. After a drawn-out legal battle with his recording company, TVT, Reznor set up his own label called Nothing Records and released the EP album Broken (1992), which earned a Grammy award. Reznor signed glam shock rocker Marilyn Manson to the Nothing label, and the two fed on each other’s successes throughout the 1990s.

Reznor’s second full-length album, The Downward Spiral (1994), debuted at number two on the Billboard charts. It was certified quadruple platinum on the strength of such singles as Closer and Hurt. (An emotional acoustic version of the latter song was a surprise hit for country legend Johnny Cash.) Nine Inch Nails appeared as a headliner at the 1994 Woodstock festival, and Happiness in Slavery, a single recorded at that performance, earned Reznor a second Grammy. In 1995 Nine Inch Nails opened for David Bowie on his North American tour, but a new album was slow to follow, and much of Reznor’s time was spent in the production studio with label mate Marilyn Manson.

The double album The Fragile appeared in 1999—hitting the top of the charts in its first week of release—but it faded quickly when no clear singles emerged. With Teeth (2005) also bowed at number one, and its industrial dance floor anthems signaled a return to the sound of The Downward Spiral. Given the half-decade wait between previous Nine Inch Nails releases, a veritable flurry of activity followed. The concept album Year Zero (2007) was accompanied by an ambitious viral marketing campaign, and instrumental samples used in its creation were collected in Ghosts I–IV (2008). Reznor signaled his break with the traditional music distribution model when he released the sixth full-length Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip (2008), as a free digital download from his Web site.

At the conclusion of the 2009 “Wave Goodbye” tour, Reznor disbanded Nine Inch Nails as a live act. In 2010 he formed the electronic group How to Destroy Angels with his wife, percussionist Mariqueen Maandig, formerly a member of the band West Indian Girl. That same year he collaborated with Atticus Ross on the music for the film The Social Network, which won the Golden Globe Academy Award for best original score.